Sustaining Open Data Innovation

Luke ClossFounder & CTO, OpenWest Systems

@lukec - http://openwe.st

Speaker Background• Based in Vancouver, BC

• Telecomm, Anti-spam, Collaboration

• Long walks, HTTP, Open Web

• Co-founder of Vancouver Hack Space• VanTrash, Budget visualization, gut, Parliament scrapers, Corporate

registry tools, Election finance tools, Recollect, Open Data catalogues, Marine AIS Traffic, CKAN, datadotgc.ca, sidewalk chalk dataviz, hackathons, Open Data Day, …

Goals of this Talk• Inspire

• Visualize

• Realistic

• Tools

Part 1: VanTrash

The Beginning

A few months later…

❤

There is something here!

How can we bring this to more people?

Problem:

Cities don’t embrace hacks.

Ideas & Hacks

InfrastructureProjects Products Services

Ideas & Hacks

InfrastructureProjects Products Services

Many of these ideas will “fail”.That’s okay.

Ideas & Hacks

InfrastructureProjects Products Services

The good innovations typically move to the right.

Ideas & Hacks

InfrastructureProjects Products Services

Established VendorsCitizens

Realization:

Cities are missing out.

Ideas & Hacks

InfrastructureProjects Products Services

Cities miss out, these solutions are too cheap!

Nobody will use this!• City won’t use it.

• City won’t link to it.

• City would need a SLA.

• No business to provide a SLA.

• Cost would be too low.

• Project will probably die out.

Why is that bad?• The city can’t do cheap things

• The city can’t collaborate with citizens

• This limits opportunity for new vendors to provide greatly cheaper services.

Realization:

Only way to achieve goals: Charge $$$

Part 2:Business Models

Tangent: Org Hacks• Co-operatives

• For-profit

• Non-profit

• Use the right type(s)!

So you want to build a business!

Business Model Canvas

Use it to:Describe / Discuss / Create / Invent / Improve

your business model

ValueCost

My BM Gen Process• Brainstorm every possible idea / detail

• Stare at it & Discuss

• Split into distinct business models

• Compare / Contrast

• Will it blend!?

• Try, learn, iterate!

4 Business Models

Citizen Funded

Citizen Funded• Requires marketing strength

• Doesn’t require a sales team

• Hard to market to target customers

• (Non-techie citizens)

• Few barriers to get started

City Funded

City Funded• Sell to municipal decision makers

• Requires sales team

• Typically looooong sloooow sale

• City handles marketing

• Administration features, cost reduction

• Can’t be too cheap, or too expensive!

Infrastructure Service

Infrastructure Service• Market to developers, no sales team.

• Make it easy for hackers to use in their town.

• Create new innovations on the service

• Too niche?

Public Open Source Service (POSS)

POSS• Idea by @Progrium - bit.ly/VJU1Mg

• Citizens collectively pitch in to cover costs

• Donations => Bank account => Hosting fees

• $$ / burn rate = months of service.

• No profit incentive to expand, enhance

• Good for small, very cheap services

Part 3:Building Recollect

Step 1:Re-designRe-brand

Re-architectRe-build

Initial thought:Cities are too much work!

Let’s sell to citizens!

➨

Pivot #1

Customer Development• “Get out of the building”

• Learn current pains

• Talk in their language

• Understand the buyers & their process

• Experiment with pricing

Funding?• Finding money for civic startups is hard

• VC’s don’t like selling to governments!

• “Cool, but what’s your plan B?”

• We said no (so far!):

• Can’t get off the treadmill

• No masters

So... don’t quit your day job!

Building a open data

company ishard work.

It helps to have a solid background

& experience.

Don’t call yourself a startup!

It’s not about open data!

Scraping data doesn’t always make

friends!

When your hobby becomes your

business, priorities change!

Part 4:Recollect Today

Product that istruly unique

in the market.

Truly amazing collaboration with

City of Ottawa

(~60% of Ottawa households have used Recollect!)

> 100,000 Garbage day reminders sent!

(Already!)

~40,000 Calendars printed at home.

Growing our customer base,

across North America

International Distribution Partners!

Building a business.

In Summary• Open data + Ideas + Hacks ➨Innovation

• Innovations + Time + Effort ➨ Products

• Building a open data company is:

• fucking hard

• fucking stressful

• fucking awesome